Kandahar, Afghanistan (Canadian Press) – Most Canadians do not understand the pressures of modern-day policing and should not rush to judgment, nor condemn the RCMP over the Robert Dziekanski affair, the Mounties’ top man said Sunday.
The public inquiry into the Polish immigrant’s death at the Vancouver airport resumes Monday and RCMP Commissioner William Elliott implored a public to wait for “a sober, sound examination of the facts and the circumstance” before deciding to condemn the force.
“I think the expression, walk a mile in my shoes comes to mind,” he said Sunday at the conclusion of a brief visit to Kandahar.
He said he’s confident sound assessments and recommendations, not knee-jerk reactions will come out of the inquiry, which has been on hiatus for two weeks.
One Mountie recently testified he was prompted into Tasering Dziekanski when the man, who had thrown a chair and spent 10 hours in the airport, brandished an open stapler in a threatening way.
Dziekanski died after being Tasered and subdued by the Mounties.
Laughter and heckling broke out in the public gallery as RCMP Const. Kwesi Millington, one of four officers called to the airport Oct. 14, 2007, demonstrated how an agitated Dziekanski held the stapler.
The inquiry lawyer asked how “four healthy, young officers” who wore body armour and carried guns could have believed an office tool was a threat.
Clearly frustrated, Elliott said he wasn’t going to defend the conduct of the officers, but urged the public to appreciate the difficult, split-second situations faced by cops.
“They don’t realize how quickly things happen and they don’t realize how quickly often – unfortunately – bad things happen,” he told reporters at Kandahar Airfield after meeting with RCMP officers, who are mentoring Afghan police.
“I would just ask Canadians to reflect for a minute before they jump to conclusions. You can have very frightening and very threatening situations. Fortunately we live in a country, unlike the country we are sitting in, where most Canadians do not encounter violence or threatening situations upclose and personal.”
Elliott, the first civilian to hold the RCMP’s top job, conceded a series of scandals, including the Dziekanski death, have damaged the federal police agency’s credibility in the eyes of the public.
But he condemned the alleged character assassination of officers and said the public has “a tendency to want to look at situations as black and white situations.”
It was Elliott’s first trip to Kandahar to view the police mentoring operation that is headquartered out of the provincial reconstruction base.
The number of police officers assigned to the training program will increase from 34 to 50 by September, he confirmed.
“There is a lot of work to do, (but) there are encouraging signs,” the commissioner said.
Training and educating Afghan police officers, many of whom are illiterate, ex-militia members, has been a slow, awkward process.
During a recent visit, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon and International Trade Minister Stockwell Day, who is in charge of the cabinet committee on Afghanistan, announced $21 million to pay the salaries of 3,000 police officers over the next two years.
The money will be administered by a United Nations’ agency.
The fledgling cops are put through a rudimentary boot camp called Focused District Development, run by the U.S.
The Kandahar reconstruction base was recently given accreditation to begin teaching the course and an advanced level program, the net effect being more officers will be churned out onto the city’s dangerous streets.
Walk in our shoes, RCMP boss says of Taser use
Matthew Fisher, Canwest News Service
March 22, 2009
Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan– Halfway around the world, RCMP Commissioner Bill Elliott found himself dogged Sunday by questions surrounding the fatal Taser incident involving a Polish man last year in Vancouver.
While visiting Canadian troops and RCMP officers in Afghanistan, reporters asked about an ongoing inquiry into the death of Polish tourist Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver airport. Dziekanski had been zapped by a Taser electric stun device after apparently threatening several RCMP officers with a stapler.
Elliott said that he thought that there had been “a tendency to look at this as a black and white situation . . . The whole notion of looking at a whole notion of looking at a video in slow motion or frame-by-frame is completely contrary to how a real human being perceives things when they are in the midst of a situation.”
In one of his strongest statements regarding what has been said and written in Canada after the Dziekanski tragedy, Elliott added, “Even in situations where people make mistakes or don’t act appropriately, I think there is a requirement for a sober, sound examination of the facts and circumstances. I think the expression, ‘Walk a mile in my shoes,’ comes to mind.”
“I am optimistic that the inquiry will result in an assessment and recommendations that are based on that and not based on a knee-jerk reaction to what is heard, what is said or seen,” Elliot told reporters at Kandahar airfield, where more than a dozen RCMP officers are deployed.
The use of Tasers, or conducted energy weapons, as officials sometimes like to call them, has raised broader issues that “really relate to the public perception of the RCMP and public confidence in the RCMP,” the commissioner said.
“I am concerned about and aware that our reputation has taken some blows,” he said.
Nevertheless, Elliott still believed that “Canadians support the RCMP phenomenally . . . I would just ask Canadians to reflect for a minute before they jump to conclusions.”